OpenStack is a software toolset which can help in building and then managing cloud computing platforms. These software tools have applications in the public cloud and private cloud as well. A non-profit organisation OpenStack Foundation looks after all the management aspects on OpenStack which include development along with community building.This prestigious project is expected to be the future of cloud computing for the level of services it is currently providing.

Source: https://www.auro.io/images/openstack-icon.png

OpenStack – Introduction And Highlights

OpenStack is completely open source, meaning that anyone can access the source code and make any modifications to the existing code. They can then go ahead and share these changes with the entire community at no charge. This remarkable feature has been attracting developers across the world to jump in and contribute to the development and perfection of the OpenStack technologies.

Owing to these capabilities, OpenStack is now capable of allowing users to deploy virtual machines and other such instances, through which they can handle several tasks for managing the cloud effectively.

OpenStack – Role In The Cloud

The actual meaning of cloud computing in itself is to provide computing resources to end users. But the only difference from traditional hosting services is that the software runs in a remote environment on reliable and scalable servers rather than on each end users computer. OpenStack falls into the category of services in which the infrastructure needed to host the required applications is supplied by the cloud service provider. This is called the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. The infrastructure can hold several separate instances at a time and runs a platform upon it. It is on this platform that developers play on and make the difference to end users.

Components

OpenStack is built with several building blocks. And because it is open source every developer can create components most suitable for their work pattern. Then what happens is that the complexity in understanding OpenStack for a newbie becomes more difficult. To avoid such typical situations, the OpenStack Foundation has identified few of most useful components and these components are distributed with the actual OpenStack services.

All these components are very specific about what they do and how we operate on them. Nova, Swift, Cinder, Neutron, Horizon, Keystone, Glance, Ceilometer and Heat are 9 of the most important components. All these component are continuously improving the OpenStack experience on the user end. The better part is these will never stop growing with more and more developers getting into the act!